What hiatus?
2005-07-25, 2:47 p.m.

Day 337 Guess that was a hiatus

Unannounced, unintended, understandable? Maybe unavoidable.

This actually started out intended for day 325. Ooops. So there are a few edits (hopefully enough) and some additions, trying to catch things up quickly without missing pertinent details. I think.

Took some vacation over the 4th of July holiday. My company normally throws us an extra day off around the 4th, so for 3 days of actual vacation you can get 9 straight days off. Considering I had 5+ weeks of vacation time available, I figured, why not?

Not a lot happened. Not a lot good anyhow. Those windows I replaced a while back? Caused problems. Not the windows themselves actually, but everything around them. Got through that problem with the header. Now have the jam extensions installed. Went to paint the outside � can�t leave primer paint on the trim & shingles for ever you know. One minor setback � didn�t have any useable paint left. We last painted the house 9 � 10 years ago. Anything I had left was all dried up & crusty in the can. So I trotted off to Sears with samples of the paint to see if they could match the colors. After all � that�s where I got the paint to begin with. Went and spent around $50 getting 2 gallons of paint. 2 quarts would have been $40 � so it actually made sense to spend the extra $10 and get 4 times as much paint.

Went home and slapped it on the house. Wasn�t even close. I could spot the new paint from 300 feet down the road. After conferring with C, we decided it would be best to alter our master time table and paint the whole house this year rather than next year. So off we went to get paint. All new colors. House used to be kind of a khaki tan for the main house, window & door trim was done in a creamy, yellowy white and the shutters & doors were a deep forest green. After a year or so of having those colors, we noticed that a lot of houses near us were already that color scheme or were changing to that scheme. New colors are a much darker tan for the house � more like a brown actually, a much richer yellow for the window & door trim and an auburn/rust color for the shutters & doors. They are actually colors from Olympic Paints and are in their �Biltmore Mansion� collection visible here http://www.biltmore.com/shop/homegarden/paint.shtml

We�re using BC8 �Woven Mystery� for the body of the house, BC9 �Precious Stone� for the window & door trim and BC11 �Rich Auburn� for the shutters & doors. (Maybe it�s my monitor, but all those colors look a little pinker or redder than in real life. The �Precious Stone� especially seems more yellow in sunlight) All from the tapestry gallery. Those coincidentally echo some of the colors we�ve used inside recently. Now we�ll have a nice consistent palette inside and out.

Now I just need time to get it done. Still have much prep work to do. While scraping loose paint, found some water damaged shingles. While removing those, found that the sheathing on the house also sustained some damage. Now have the sheathing repaired, and have started to replace shingles. I�m afraid to scrape any more paint for fear of what�s underneath. I really don�t want to afford any more repairs.

Survived a bout of oral surgery. Minor stuff. Got the stitches out Friday (15th). Glad too. Feel like something was constantly caught in my teeth. Well, there was, but I couldn�t go ripping out stitches on my own quite so soon.

Back to the unscheduled house painting � made good progress. Pushed real hard this past weekend and got the west side complete and also the south side (front) complete � including re-mounting the decorative shutters. That only leaves the finish coat on the north & east sides, plus some window trim work and touching up shutter screws.

Good thing too because the next three weekends are booked up tighter than a frogs butt. This weekend we have a family re-union on C�s mom�s side. The reunion is here in New York, but the family festivities will tie up most every minute from Friday evening 7/29 clear through to Sunday pm.

The following weekend (8/5 � 8/7) we�re doing another reunion, this time on C�s dad�s side of the clan. This will involve a trip to the �burbs of Boston which is way cool because none of us has ever visited Boston. We�ll be doing one of the �Duck Tours� to see downtown and the historic sights. Still need to come up with breakfast ideas for 40+ folks the morning of the 7th. Ought to be fun.

The weekend after that my mom is moving to her new house. While logistically not a difficult move, it will be a killer for sentimental reasons. 43 years in that house. That may be the only �home� my brothers consciously remember. It�s quite possible I�m the only one of the four of us to remember living anywhere else as we were growing up. In 3 weeks, it will belong to someone else. Got to check into getting parking privileges for hunting season. Soon.

That brings us to the middle of August. Son #1 wants to move into his apartment for school on 8/15. That�ll be a busy, busy day. Also happens to be C & my 24th anniversary. Seems to be a bad habit we�ve picked up � always doing something other than what we�d like to do on our anniversary. Ah well. The Friday of that week, son #2 gets to move back into his college dorms. That�s always a big hoot too.

Somewhere in there, I may find a day or two to actually try and finish painting the house. So glad the weather cooperated and allowed us to make some progress this past weekend. Temp was actually only in the 80�s and the humidity was reasonable for the most part. Couple more good pushes and it�ll be done.

Still hanging in there on the not smoking front. Recently hit my 11 month anniversary. Every now & then I�ll run into the odd craving, but now they�re so weak and fleeting there�s no problem fighting them off. Coincidently, my 1 year anniversary of not smoking will be 1 week after my 24th wedding anniversary. Wonder if I can catch C in a sentimental moment and get her to commit to quitting??

Been very bad about getting to the gym lately. Not like I�ve had a house to paint or anything. Plus E�s work schedule changed, so now I have to drop him off at 7am, not 8:30. That, and I�m so dead after a night of hanging off a ladder painting, there�s no way I could even think about doing 30 minutes on the elliptical. Somehow, I gotta believe that painting a house has some physical, exercise type benefits, even if I can�t enter them in the Fittlynx system. I gotta go complain about that. You can get credit for �gardening�, but nothing for painting or remodeling. Both of those activities burn up a lot more calories than pulling weeds. Maybe I�ll just adjust the definition of gardening so I can get some Fittlynx credit for all the work I�ve put in on the house. Plus I think I�ll send in a well rehearsed rant about the lack of painting and carpentry as entries under physical activities. Hmmmm. New mission, new goal.

Time to get to work. 337 days smoke free.

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